The New York Times restaurant critics heartbreaking and hilarious
account of how he learned to love food just enough after decades of
wrestling with his weight Frank Bruni was born round. Round as in
stout, chubby, and hungry, always and endlessly hungry. He grew up
in a big, loud Italian family in White Plains, New York, where
meals were epic, outsize affairs. At those meals, he demonstrated
one of his foremost qualifications for his future career: an epic,
outsize appetite for food. But his relationship with eating was
tricky, and his difficulties with managing it began early. When he
was named the restaurant critic for the New York Times in 2004, he
knew enough to be nervous. He would be performing one of the most
closely watched tasks in the epicurean universe; a bumpy ride was
inevitable, especially for someone whose writing beforehand had
focused on politics, presidential campaigns, and the Pope. But as
he tackled his new role as one of the most loved and hated
tastemakers in the New York restaurant world, he also had to make
sense of a decades-long love-hate affair with food, which had been
his enemy as well as his friend. Now hed have to face down this
enemy at meal after indulgent meal. His Italian grandmother had
often said, Born round, you dont die square. Would he fall back
into his worst old habits? Or had he established a truce with the
food on his plate? In tracing the highly unusual path Bruni
traveled to become a restaurant critic, Born Round tells the
captivating story of an unpredictable journalistic odyssey and
provides an unflinching account of one persons tumultuous, often
painful lifelong struggle with his weight. How does a committed
eater embrace food without being undone by it? Born Round will
speak to every hungry hedonist who has ever had to rein in an
appetite to avoid letting out a waistband, and it will delight
anyone interested in matters of family, matters of the heart, and
the big role food plays in both.